MedicalMine Adds E-Prescribing to Its EHR Software

Health IT software company MedicalMine has integrated Surescripts' e-prescribing network into its ChARM EHR application.

MedicalMine, a nonprofit health care IT software company, has announced new Surescripts' e-prescription capabilities for its ChARM
electronic health records platform.
The company
has completed certification to add the Surescripts service, which is the largest
electronic prescription network in the United States. The e-prescribing
features allow doctors to send messages from the cloud application to
pharmacies. Through Surescripts, doctors prescribe new medications, authorize
refills and receive denials on drugs from health plans.

More than
54,000 pharmacies use Surescripts to receive prescriptions from doctors.
Hospitals and health information exchanges (HIEs) also access the service. Through
Surescripts, doctors receive benefits information from health plans to enable
them to prescribe lower-cost drugs for patients.

By adding
e-prescribing to its EHR platform, MedicalMine aims to provide another tool for
doctors and clinicians to monitor complex conditions or illnesses caused by
multiple genes or environmental factors.
MedicalMine
announced its integration with Surescripts on Sept. 16.
Built on the Zoho cloud
platform, ChARM EHR is accessible through any Web browser on a desktop, laptop
or iPad, according to Pramila Srinivasan, co-founder and CEO of MedicalMine.
"ChARM
EHR features the same reliability, scalability and security offered by the Zoho
cloud platform, which already hosts online applications used by millions every
day, accessed from Zoho.com," Srinivasan wrote in an email to eWEEK.
The iPad's interface
is particularly appealing to doctors using ChARM, according to Elizabeth Horn,
co-founder and executive vice president of marketing and business development.
"Everything
you touch on the iPad becomes a data point, and compared to some of the EHRs
that have been on display forever, it's like the speedboat compared to the
ocean liner," Horn told eWEEK.
"We've built it on this innovative, flexible Zoho background."
MedicalMine
launched ChARM EHR, previously named ChARM Physician, in October 2010. It
allows doctors to input medical records and even store children's handwriting
and photographs of rashes and bruises.
ChARM EHR
provides a patient dashboard feature to allow clinicians to view data from
multiple providers, including therapists, caregivers and other physicians.
By using ChARM
EHR, doctors have been able to save time on retrieving patients' medical
histories, Horn said.
"To
improve how we [refer] the kids to different kinds of treatments and enable
doctors to make informed decisions about kids they were seeing with these
chronic diseases, we really needed to move it into the EHR space," Horn
said.
The program
allows physicians' practices to manage their office workflow, schedule
appointments and exchange messages with patients. Built-in charts allow doctors
to keep track of symptoms and incorporate drug database data. It integrates
with patient portals and allows physicians to extract data for studies.
MedicalMine
introduced its first application, ChARMTracker, in June 2009 to allow users to
monitor autism and other chronic diseases.
The company
created its Children's Autism Recovery Map (ChARM) Web applications to allow
caregivers to track the progress of children suffering from autism and other
chronic conditions.
Both co-founders, Horn and Srinivasan, have a child with
autism. Srinivasan is the wife of Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu, and Horn is married
to NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson.
Editor's note: This story has been corrected to reflect that MedicalMine is a separate business entity from NetSuite and Zoho.

Brian T. Horowitz is a freelance technology and health writer as well as a copy editor. Brian has worked on the tech beat since 1996 and covered health care IT and rugged mobile computing for eWEEK since 2010. He has contributed to more than 20 publications, including Computer Shopper, Fast Company, FOXNews.com, More, NYSE Magazine, Parents, ScientificAmerican.com, USA Weekend and Womansday.com, as well as other consumer and trade publications. Brian holds a B.A. from Hofstra University in New York.